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Posted by Anne B ·

Zooming in and out

I want to try some of the stuff in this paragraph, which is part of this post:

Practice zooming projects in and out. Make a basic 2-level project tree (root is project name and children are steps). Then add additional levels above and below. Do this multiple separate ways. And redo the original tree for the same project: write different steps for the same activity, and then do more levels above and below. Compare everything and see what seems realistic and useful to you. Imagine doing it and what would be useful or bad (too much detail or too little detail). Imagine explaining it to others and what would be useful. Look for errors. Actually do some projects and see what following the steps is like. Try turning your brain off, not using common sense or common knowledge, and only following the steps, and see how well or badly they work. You shouldn’t expect it to work perfectly that way but you can see how broken it is – some lists of project steps break more than others which shows they were making more assumptions and leaving more out.

This sounds like a big project. I will start small.

For this thread, my starting goal is just the first three sentences, once. I’ll do one basic two-level project tree and add one additional level above and one additional level below.

Then I’ll evaluate and decide if I want to add to my goal and do more.

Comments & Events

Anne B Anne B
At first I wanted to use a learning activity that I normally do. But I had trouble making a basic two-level tree out of a learning activity. I don’t know if it’s because I couldn’t break things down enough or because what I’m doing for learning is too complicated or because learning is just inherently more complicated than some other things.

Then I thought of doing steps for going grocery shopping. My first attempt was this:

Going grocery shopping
  1. At-home preparation
  2. Getting there
  3. Shopping
  4. Check-out
  5. Getting stuff into car
  6. Getting home
  7. Unloading

I wanted to get it down to 2-5 steps. After some thought, I consolidated it:

Going grocery shopping
  1. Preparation
  2. Getting to the store
  3. Choosing the groceries
  4. Paying for the groceries
  5. Getting me and the groceries to our places at home

Putting the groceries into the car, driving home, getting the groceries out of the car, bringing the groceries into the house, and putting the groceries away are all part of getting the groceries from the point of paying for them to the place I want them, which is put away at home.

I considered leaving out “Preparation” but decided to keep it in because preparation is part of the project. I don’t do the rest of the steps without the preparation.
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Anne B Anne B
Hmm. Is there a way to distinguish an ordered list from a non-ordered list when it's in tree diagram format?
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Anne B Anne B
I guess I could number the nodes.
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Anne B Anne B
I have a hard time knowing if I’m doing some learning activity because I think I should be doing it or because I have a better reason than that. In this case, I think I have successfully determined that I don’t want to do this zooming in and out exercise after all. 

However, I do want to think more about how my bigger projects are organized groupings of smaller pieces. That’s something important that I think this exercise is meant to get at.
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